Chamber of Game: Broken Age (Act 1)

Whether you’re part of the 90,000 backers who supported Double Fine’s breakout Kickstarter success Broken Age or a cautiously optimistic adventure game fan, the wait is finally over. Thus spoke Tim Schafer:

Broken Age is an adventure game. Which is awkward, because everybody knows adventure games are dead. Well, most people do. It seems that nobody ever informed adventure game fans. They are under the impression that adventure games are alive and well. And through the magic of crowd funding, it looks like they may be right!

It’s been sixteen years since I’ve made an adventure game, almost twenty years since I’ve made a point-and-click, and just shy of two years since I dared the internet to force me to make one. Coming back to the genre has been like finding an old jacket in a box in your garage that you haven’t worn in twenty years but once you shake the dust off and put it on you realize it’s an amazing jacket and it still fits, and once you patch the holes in the pockets it could easily take a spot in your main jacket rotation. Oh, and also, in one of the pockets was three and a half million dollars.

The project formerly known as Double Fine Adventure caught fire on Kickstarter in March of 2012 when gamers, drawn to Schafer’s desire to return to the Adventure game genre and Double Fine’s pedigree for charming and solid games, emptied their pockets in a veritable orgy of Shut Up and Take My Money. All eyes have been glued to Broken Age’s uniquely open development process, including over a dozen high quality documentary videos surrounding the game and people of Double Fine. With the scope of the game ballooning from a small experimental project into a full length, hand drawn adventure game, Schafer and company decided to split the game into two parts and release the second Act as a form of episodic content, similar to how Telltale structures their Adventure games. Act One is available now for backers and will be released to the public on January 28th. The price tag includes the cost of both Acts, the second which is expected to release later this year.

In this episode of Chamber of Game, Eric is super excited to show Andrew the intriguing worlds of Shay and Vella and brave ice cream avalanches and cantankerous grandpas. The video shows just the very beginning segments and is mostly spoiler-free; each character’s story is stopped during the fist major plot hook and catalyst for their respective stories.

Chamber of Game is a video series highlighting new games with gameplay and commentary. To keep up with our amazing videos Subscribe to our YouTube channel and Follow us on Twitch.tv.

Author

The PC Editor for Leviathyn is usually seen raving about the merits of computer gaming while hurling empty beer bottles at anyone who tries to engage him. Occasionally he’s found in a dark corner gently hugging his keyboard. He also makes a great tuna quesadilla.
You can follow his clever insights on twitter @RogueWatson, gaze in awe at his gaming backlog playthroughs @RoguesAdventure, and watch his always entertaining livestreams at twitch.tv/LeviathynTV and twitch.tv/Gorbash722.